Trumpet legend and multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith and Swiss pianist Sylvie Courvoisier—both award-winning composers with long-standing artistic partnership — presented their new album Angel Falls (Intakt, 2024) during this year’s Vilnius Jazz Festival. The performance marked a significant moment: Smith, who turns 84 in December, has announced this as his final European tour.
“I think all art is, by nature, intended to motivate society for change, and the only reason change doesn’t happen is because within the target population, courage is lacking.” — Wadada Leo Smith
Their duo, a compelling dialogue of sound and silence, presented atmospheric compositions infused with depth, lyricism and spiritual reflection. Courvoisier’s crystalline precision and Smith’s meditative trumpet phrasing created an evening of profound beauty and quiet intensity.
Founded and directed by Antanas Gustys in 1987, the Vilnius Jazz Festival remains a vanguard platform for creative and free jazz. This year’s festival carried a deeply emotional resonance — not only because of Wadada Leo Smith’s farewell concert, but also for its celebration of Lithuanian jazz and its vibrant visual dimension.
Vytautas Labutis, one of Lithuania’s most prominent jazz masters — saxophonist, composer, and educator — was awarded the distinction “For Merit to Lithuanian Jazz.”
Labutis has been a central figure in Lithuanian jazz for decades. He has performed with the country’s most renowned ensembles, toured widely across Europe, Asia, the United States, and Australia, and recorded more than fifty albums. A versatile artist, he moves with ease between chamber and large-scale forms, experimental and academic projects, as well as film and theatre music. As a devoted teacher at the Balys Dvarionas Music School, he continues to inspire new generations of jazz musicians. Vytautas Labutis previously received the Grand Prix of the Birštonas Jazz Festival in 1996 for his outstanding contribution to Lithuanian jazz. For me personally, Vytautas Labutis was a mentor from my youth — a guiding figure in my journey of discovering and increasingly loving my closest lifelong companion: jazz.
Jazz, as Wynton Marsalis says, “is a conversation.” The Vilnius Jazz Festival continues that dialogue — between musicians and listeners, generations and nations, tradition and experimentation. And in this dialogue, courage is present — in sound, in silence, and in every artist who dares to turn music into a force for change.
All photos except Vytautas Labutis ©Vilma Dobilaite
